The Best Laid Plans, Ch 1 - Burn the Heart
by Fantom-Contakt
Summary: A variation of the main storyline in which Moriarty is very aware that he has been deceived by the Holmes brothers. Here is in which Moriarty performs his ultimate revenge on Sherlock from atop the hospital. Unprepared, believing he had won, Sherlock has to watch as Jim fulfills his promise to 'burn the heart out' of him.


_"… As long as I am still alive, you have a way out. You can save your friends… Well, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT." _

**Lazarus is a go. Moriarty killed himself. –SH**

_'Ah Ah Ah Ah STAYIN' ALIVE - STAYIN ALIVE.'_

Sherlock looked up from his text to Mycroft across to the ledge where Moriarty had left his cell phone. At the edge where he was about to tell John it was all a magic trick. That mark from where he would deceive his only friend and the world. The sound from the phone seemed all too harsh against the quiet air on top of the hospital. The garish song repeated the line of lyrics over again.

_'Ah Ah Ah Ah STAYIN' ALIVE - STAYIN ALIVE.'_

A ringtone.

Sherlock's long stride brought him to the edge to look down at the phone and the ground that lay far below out of focus.

**ANSWER me SHERLOCK**

The caller I.D. screen, usually displaying a name, or a place, gave and order to the detective who could not help but obey. Sherlock knew there was not a lot of time, but curiosity was always his undoing. The people below who were parts of the ploy were standing by, their faces upturned, hands shading their eyes, poised, waiting until he gave the signal. Standing up on the ledge was that signal, to start inflating the drop bag. He reached down, his long slender digits wrapping around the little black piece of technology. His thumb caressing over the green phone light that was the answer button before the lyrics could repeat a third time and swiftly brought it up to his ear.

"HI!" The high pitched and all too jovial voice came over the phone from the other side. "_You and your brother think you are so clever. Soooo... Clever."_

The detective's eyebrows rose over his gemstone colored eyes and Sherlock felt his chest strain against the buttons on his coat as he turned to look at the body that lay on the roof of the hospital, not ten feet from him. A garish little grin on his face, lying in a pool of blood that was forming around his head like some demented man's painting of angel's halo.

"_YES… This is a recording, I'm really there, __**dead**__… But that is okay. Because you will be with me really soon. Maybe not as soon as you are about to lie to your little companion about, but soon enough. Are you really going to hurt Johnny like that? You are cold Sherlock. I like it. Compliments aside… I told you. I told you I was going to burn you. Burn the __**HEART OUT OF YOU**__... Didn't I? I thought you were bonded to your work. Thought you lived for the puzzle. Lived to solve, to find something interesting. I though if I destroyed your reputation, you would fold. But I can't do that, can I, as long as one person believes in you, you would survive what I set up right? LOOK at all the work you put into this little show. And who is it for hm? WHO IS THIS FARCE FOR? Really. To fool the world? To fool me and my people? No… that is a bonus. The great Sherlock HOLMES will get to come back from the dead. You drama Queen! I bet you look fabulous in a crown… But you are doing this for him aren't you? Ooooh, to see your face right now! I bet he is arriving for your little show any second now. Go ahead and call him, I will hold... But, I would wait a moment to step up on that ledge there SHERLOCK. I wouldn't want you to fall off. And I imagine there will be a bit of a shockwave_."

Sherlock listens to the dead man's voice, engrossed in the way his voice intonation moves. The way he can see his demented face forming the words as if he is standing there just in front of him, floating a ways off the edge, suspended in space, gesturing and expressing the words of the recording. The words almost pass him for favor of watching the demon that is Moriarty in his imagination. Then the meaning of the words he is speaking register and he sucks in a breath, and moves to look over the edge as a black cabbie is pulling up. He dials John's number on his own mobile, and his hand shakes as he does so. His brilliant mind flying into overdrive on what it was he missed.

He will regret this moment of past reflection instead of current observation. John would have been in the moment, not analyzing the past. Because Sherlock will remember that it did not matter where or when Moriarty figured out his and Mycroft's plans. Only what the psychopath was about to do with that knowledge. Sherlock's phone calls out, and he hears John's voice on the other end, setting it on speaker as he holds Moriarty's phone to his ear.

"Sherlock?"

How is John able to put so much meaning into his name? So much worry and condemnation in just the way he says it. How many times has he said his name? 5,557 times. Over and over his he hears his name. He answers far less than John calls.

"John…"

Sherlock hears that giggle over the line pressed to his ear. It is a demonic thing, full of delight emanating from Moriarty's phone.

"_Behold Sherlock! The heart of you._ "

"Sherlock, where are you?"

John turns slowly, scanning the milling people of the street. The sound of Sherlock's voice had him on edge… the way he said his name. He has heard him once before say it like that. When he stepped out of the hall with a bomb on his chest in the pool. John feels his heart start to beat harder. He can tell that his senses are sharpening, his grip on the phone tightening, and John's brow lowers in concern.

"On the roof of the hospital."

The consulting detective can see where John lingers on the street corner, turning before looking up and he can picture the puzzled look on his face. He can see if perfectly. Every wrinkle and muscle that makes up the expressive faces that is John. Sherlock can see it clearly as if he stands right in front of him. As the hundreds of other times he has seen it, and always beside him. He can see the way John stands there, a little too stiff, military, obeying him, falling to his training when the stress amps up. John stands where he has to stand to not see the air bag and the theatric setup. Where Sherlock is going to have to keep John for at least the 90 seconds it will take the air bag to inflate enough to make sure he sustains no injury from his leap.

_"…I suspect you will come to see me soon after this. You cannot live without a heart, Sherlock. How will you do it? Pills? Maybe right off this roof at some other less ready spot? I hope not. I want this to draw out. I want you to suffer. Seems only fitting this is how he goes hmm? Like so many others of his comrades in war?" _

The singsong, flirty tune Moriarty gets when he knows he is inflicting pain, forcing an emotion suddenly dies, and his words are flat and hollow when next they speak a beat later.

"_You have about five seconds, when this call ends. Say goodbye, SHERLOCK. __**Ha- HA**__-_" The little upturn of Moriarty's voice belongs at the end of a happy tale on children's television before descending into a maddening cackle, before abruptly ending.

The terrible realization that Moriarty knew dawned on Sherlock's face, his cheeks growing gaunt as his mouth fell open.

"No…"

The good old-fashioned villain's phone fell out of Sherlock's hand, bouncing once on the edge before falling over and off the edge. Sherlock's long arm then reached out over the ledge, his finger's splayed wide and straining as if he could will John to just…

Not be there.

NOT be in that place where the plan designated the cabbie to drop him off.

Where SHERLOCK has put HIM.

All the planning was for naught. Mycroft had aspired to beat the devil at his own game, and he had seen through their combined genius with his madness, and he used it against them. The street was clear, save for people that belonged to Mycroft and Sherlock. Homeless network. Government employees. John. Moriarty's plans were brilliant and elegantly simple. He was right. Sherlock had needed to be clever. To do this final act of the dramatic, plan it to a tee. Right down to where his audience was to stand. It was brilliantly, twisted my Moriarty to evil, and Sherlock's voice strangled as he waved his outstretched arm frantically, his coat ruffling and his chest feeling too compressed for words, but he forced them into the phone.

"NONONO! JOHN RUN! **RUN**! JOHN THERE IS-"

"Sherlock?! Run? Run where?"

John followed the order, even confused, and moved while questioning, starting towards the hospital. The tone Sherlock had instantly scaring him to motion. Was there a sniper again? His eyes flying around him at all the window as he half turned in his jog towards the entrance, passing the corner of the brick ambulance station.

"JOHN! THERE IS A BOMB- RUN!"

John's body stuttered below and he looked up towards the dark silhouette there, up on the rooftop.

"**A WHAT?! SHER-"**

The flash and sound drown out the screaming of his name. Sherlock felt his throat constrict around the vowels of his companion's name, but no sound beyond the deafening cacophonous sound of the explosion. John's name becomes an unbidden and uncontrollable emotional outcry from Sherlock off the top of the hospital. It is down out by a roar as the bomb going off swallowed a monster gulp of oxygen to fuel it's burn into a living monster, roaring when it's lungs are full.

The gravel of the rooftop jumped with the concussive force, and the light and heat that waved up to where Sherlock stood had him flail back in a preservative and uncontrollable response. Sherlock gripped his phone and flung himself forward again against the ledge, leaning over, his piercing eyes frantically searching downwards.

"JOHN!? **JOHN**!"

He firmly said into the phone, his voice returning full force as he sucks in gulps of panicked air. His brain absorbing as much as he could about the fire scene below from his perfect bird's eye view as he leaned. The scene scarring into his mind as he sought to document and observe every detail.

Somewhere below, John just fine, like he always was, down in the mess that was the front of what used to be the ambulance station for the A&E. Sherlock just had to find a sign. A signal. Something down below to indicate the fact that Sherlock needed to be true. That he had not just gotten John killed. John needed to be fine. He was just fine. There was a clue! There had to be. He just had to find it. Skewing facts to fit opinion. To fit panicking need.

The line died and the two tones of an ended call came across the line into Sherlock's ear.

He could not hear it over the high-pitched whine of his damaged ears.

He simply kept repeating John's name as he turned from the edge to run, half stumbling over the grinning body of Moriarty, frantic for the stairs down.


End file.
